Day 28 (Sept 10)

A dim dawn breakfast, and out on the trail early. We've got a longish day ahead of us -- no friendly state forests on this stretch, nor any camping on private land until we reach the Hickory Hill lean-to in about 18.2 miles. The days are getting shorter and we don't like hiking in the dark.

A lot of road walking today, but some interesting scenery:

It's a wind farm! (Based on the haystacks, I think it's also a regular farm.) Those turbines are surprisingly noisy, a lot like having an older dishwasher running in the next room. But for those who find the sound of clean dishes celebratory, the wind concern was nice enough to build a little public picnic pavilion. Pity there's not a little mini-turbine on its roof, powering a USB cell phone charging port. That would be endearing.

And here's what a soybean farm looks like:

Not as dramatic as a wind farm, but comforting in other ways.

We do have little bits of trail on private land today, and I should mention that it's really nice trail. In general we fear the private land sections as they're often roughly conceived and undermaintained, but today it's a joy. The very best apples of the entire trip are here, two lone survivors, small and tart and sweet, from two tiny, beleaguered trees on either side of the trail.

Mostly, though, we're on high, dirt roads, looking anxiously for the next trail turnoff.

Also, we've got some nice looking abandoned houses:

We descend to the Cohocton River valley and cross under I-86/NY-17 just north of the city of Bath. Our impression is that most FLT through-hikers detour to the south for some supplies & R & R, but we're still fresh from Hornell so we've decided to skip Bath (ha ha) and hope to have a night of it tomorrow near Hammondsport instead. Thus all we see of the Bath scene is the Lost Indian Trading Post (and met the Lost Indian himself! Nice place but sadly not much for us there but tiny meat sticks), gravel trucks and spooky houses. Supposedly it's a fun town, though.

We reach our day's destination, the Hickory Hill lean-to (still on private land, belonging I think to the Hickory Hill Campground somewhere below) with plenty of daylight to spare, and feast on sandwiches with prosciutto and mozzarella, accented with some mint we found growing on the side of the road in the valley. Deb is nervous as always because this is a pleasant spot, and people could show up at any time...

...but they don't. Our evening is blissfully unsocial. We retire as the rain clouds gather, and the lean-to keeps us pretty dry through the night. The taller among us might consider sleeping with our heads on the inside next time, to avoid the facial-cleansing spray of the shifting winds.